It’s always sensible to be gracious in victory. Which perhaps explains why Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP’s deputy leader, said this in reaction to Wendy Alexander’s resignation:

“While Wendy Alexander has been the author of own misfortune, there can be no doubt that the information on her illegal campaign donation could only have come from within the inner circles of the Labour Party.

“Decay from within is characteristic of the decline of the New Labour project, and Wendy Alexander’s resignation is a symptom of this wider malaise.”

Would it have been expecting too much for her to have expressed some human feeling for her parliamentary colleague, some basic respect, even?

Reminds me of Alex Salmond’s well-judged announcement to SNP conference in 2005 that Mike Watson had been sentenced to 16 months in prison. Oh, how the delegates clapped and cheered!

It’s funny, it is this same grace that I thought was lacking from Wendy’s tearful resignation speech this morning.

Wendy managed to spend most of the time attacking the SNP for their contribution to this “breach of natural justice” and yet didn’t really at any point put her hands up and admit that something must have been wrong for the resignation to have occurred in the first place.

If she believed strongly enough in her conviction that the SNP were just playing Politics with it then Wendy should have stayed on as leader and argued her case from a position of strength. Her resignation is surely an acceptance of at least some guilt and she should have had the humility and the grace to admit so today.

Given the abuse Wendy was levelling out to the SNP (live on BBC News of course), Nicola Sturgeon was left with no other option to defend her party and go on the attack herself.